by Dying Light: The Beast made it into our "Best Graphics of 2025" awards after arriving in September that year, so it's perhaps not too much of a surprise that the planned last-gen version of the game has been officially cancelled after nearly a year of exploratory development.
The game was initially announced with PS4 and Xbox One support, but developers Techland took to Twitter today to confirm that those versions never made it into full production and would now no longer be coming out due to technical limitations:
"Dying Light: The Beast was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware. Its open world, advanced visuals, and fluid combat and traversal all depend on processing power and memory that previous-generation consoles simply cannot provide. As development progressed, it became clear that bringing the game to those platforms would require compromises that would prevent us from delivering the experience we set out to create."
Techland goes on to say that they don't want players on PS4 or Xbox One to feel left behind, and that full refunds will be available for pre-order customers that "were expecting to play on either platform".
Our coverage of the game at launch (embedded at the top of the article) did point to some design decisions that seemed to have been made with last-gen consoles in mind, such as slightly restrained terrain geometry. The Series S version gives the best idea of what a last-gen release would look like, with a single 1080p 30fps experience with dynamic resolution scaling - though even the Series S benefits greatly from a more modern CPU and faster storage versus either the base or enhanced gen-eight consoles.
Given how deep we are in the PS5 and Xbox Series generation - and with PS6 and Project Helix not that far away - the idea of a relatively intensive game coming out on PS4 and Xbox One has become far less common than it was a few years ago. With that in mind, I don't think anyone will be hugely disappointed in Techland's decision.
What do you make of things though? Are you still playing on PS4 and Xbox One with no PS5, Xbox Series or PC available? I'd be curious to hear from you, so do chime in via the comments box below.